The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley

I was going to bitch about how the book keeps going in circles and mostly about animals until past half way. Then it gets into some decent juice about human psychology, gender differences and soooo much more.

– This concept, that all progress is relative, has come to be known in biology by the name of the Red Queen, after a chess piece that Alice meets in Through the Looking-Glass, who perpetually runs without getting very far because the landscape moves with her: It is an increasingly influential idea in evolutionary theory, and one that will recur throughout the book. The faster you run, the more the world moves with you and the less you make progress. Life is a chess tournament in which if you win a game, you start the next game with the handicap of a missing pawn.

– Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow.

– Red Queen is that she runs but stays in the same place. The world keeps coming back to where it started; there is change but not progress.

– Viruses, bacteria, and fungi, the causes of most diseases.

– Why different sexes? Tragedy of the commons. Like communism didn’t work or when an exceptional athlete is stuck in a 2nd rate team.

– Males have many small while females have few larger gametes. Mobile creatures usually have genders. Sessile don’t, and are usually hermaphroditic.

– Parents in good condition probably have male-biased litters of young; parents in poor condition probably have female-biased litters because mothers in poor condition is likely to produce a feeble son who will fail to mate at all, whereas her daughters can join harems and reproduce even when not in top condition.

– I think it was Korea that found a way to track sperm by dyeing it with fluorescent ink and sort xy genes.

– Women more than men can “marry up,” into a higher social and economic caste, so daughters of poor people are more likely to do well than sons.

– We consciously decide whether to consider people, we fall in love despite ourselves, we entirely fail to fall in love with people who fall in love with us.

– Fishers vs good genes: The Fisher (sexy-son, good-taste) advocates are those who insist that the reason peahens prefer beautiful males is that they seek heritable beauty itself to pass on to their sons, so that those sons may in turn attract females. The Good-gene people follow Alfred Russel Wallace (though they do not know it) in arguing that arbitrary and foolish as it may seem for a female to choose a male because his tail is long or his song loud, there is method in her madness. The tail or the song tells each female exactly how good the genes are of each male. The fact that he can sing loudly or grow and look after a long tail proves that he can father healthy and vigorous daughters and sons just as surely as the fishing ability of a tern tells his mate that he can feed a growing family. Ornaments and displays are designed to reveal the quality of genes.

– When a man wants to seduce a woman, he does not send her a copy of his bank statement but a pearl necklace. He does not send her his doctor ‘s report but lets slip that he runs twenty miles a week and never gets colds. He does not tell her what degree he got but instead dazzles her with wit: He does not display testaments to how thoughtful he is but sends her roses on her birthday. Each gesture has a message: I’m rich, I’m fit, I’m clever, I’m nice.

– This immune effect of testosterone is the reason that men are more susceptible to infectious diseases than women, a trend that occurs throughout the animal kingdom.

– Inca leaders had 1500 concubines and death to cheaters. Human history of harems, etc.

– Christians prevent sex because it was the reason for violence and trouble.

– Men whose wives have been with them all day ejaculate much smaller amounts than men whose wives have been absent all day. It is as if the males are subconsciously compensating for any opportunities for female infidelity that might be present.

– Of the many mental features that are claimed to be different between the sexes, four stand out as repeatable, real, and persistent in all psychological tests.
1st girls are better at verbal tasks.
2nd boys are better at mathematical tasks.
3rd boys are more aggressive.
4th boys are better at some visuo-spatial tasks and girls at others. (And, interestingly, gay men are more like women than heterosexual men in some of these respects.)

– Baby girls are more interested in smiling, communicating, and in people, boys in action and things.

– Shown cluttered pictures, boys select objects, girls people. Boys are instantly obsessed with dismantling, assembling, destroying, possessing, and coveting things. Girls are fascinated by people and treat their toys as surrogate people.

– A man who develops a preference for other men is a man who has a different gene that affects how his testicles develop or a different gene that affects how his brain responds to hormones or a different learning experience during the pubertal burst of testosterone—or some combination of these. A prenatal exposure to deficiency of testosterone increases the likelihood of a man becoming homosexual. Men with an extra X chromosome and men exposed in the womb to female hormones are more likely to be gay or effeminate, and effeminate boys do indeed grow up to be gay more often than other boys: Intriguingly, men who were conceived and born in periods of great stress, such as toward the end of World War II, are more often gay than men born at other times. Gays are also more often left-handed than heterosexuals. Studies show that homosexuality is heritable.

– Usual hip to waist ratio stuff that get mens attention.

Big up (kinda) to the PUAs that recommended this book.

Contents
– Acknowledgements
1 – Human Nature
2 – The Enigma
3 – The Power of Parasites
4 – Genetic Mutiny and Gender
5 – The Peacock’s Tale
6 – Polygamy and the Nature of Men
7 – Monogamy and the Nature of Women
8 – Sexing the Mind
9 – The Uses of Beauty
10 – The Intellectual Chess Game
Epilogue – The Self-Domesticated Ape
– Notes
– Bibliography
– Index

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